Vietnam plans to reduce its 2007 rice exports by 16.5 per cent against last year to ensure food security in the face of widespread pest infestation, DPA QUOTED AN official as saying on Friday. The world's second largest rice exporter set a target to export 4 million tons of rice this year, compared with nearly 4.8 million tons last year, according to Trang Hieu Dung, director of the Planning Department under the Ministry of Agriculture. "The reduction is due to the fear that the ongoing rice pest infestation and other diseases in the Mekong Delta and the south-eastern regions may reduce the output of this year's winter-spring crop," Dung said. In November, Vietnam's government ordered a halt to further rice exports for the rest of 2006 and ordered releases from the country's rice reserves because of feared shortages and domestic price hikes for the staple food. Of 1.6 million hectares of winter-spring rice fields in the southern regions, 11 per cent has been infected with pests and other diseases, according to the ministry. As a result, the rice output of the Mekong Delta, the country's rice bowl, is estimated at 8 million tons this year, down 11 per cent against last year. Last month, Minister of Agriculture Cao Duc Phat issued an urgent message to instruct farmers to destroy infected rice fields and to spray their fields with pesticides provided free by the government. "If the pest plague is stamped out early, we may revise up the export plan for this year," Dung said. Suffering from rice shortages just two decades ago, Vietnam has now become the world's second largest rice exporter behind Thailand, following a series of liberalizing reforms. The country produced 35.8 million tons of paddy rice last year, three times as mush as the 12 million tons in 1981. This year's projected yield is 36 million tons of paddy. Since 1996, Vietnam has consistently exported over 3 million tons of rice annually, mainly to such markets as the Philippines, Indonesia and Cuba through government-to-government contracts.
